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September-October Challenge: Aerial Atlas

This will be a listing from the Nile Books website ;-) I figure to do ONE zoomed-in neighborhood map.

This bit goes in the 'look within' section as one of the preview pages, but I figure in this thread it belongs up front to give a brief explanation...

Introduction pg i

NYC transit always seems to get more complicated, but is always trying to serve the citizens better. Chicago still has their "L" trains. NYC used to, but we're above that now. We've gone from "L" to "EVAN". That is of course the EleVated AeropNeumatic line. Either this is the horizontal version of the city's ubiquitous "choobs" - the pneumatic tube elevators now stuck to the side of most tall buildings - or the choobs are a mere vertical copy of the EVAN. Which you believe may depend on whether you're a Transit System man, or a Slider.

The choobs in truth are a natural progression from the old department store and bank pneumatic message capsules. Human-sized (limited to Merely Moderate Men and Not-Too Broads, of course), these whisk the traveler to either his destination, if he lives or works in the building being ascended, or else to his launch spot, if he or she is headed for a slidewire or aircar dock. The EVAN on the other hand is just a modern plastic-shelled version of Mr. Beach's subway of two hundred years ago. Hardly innovations, merely evolution of earlier ideas, perfected for the use of the modern citizen-traveler.

The aircars though, those are new. Despite predictions of the middle twentieth century, flying cars were not just around the corner. Rather, they are just coming into their own now, in the 2050's. Thanks to Our Fair City's generous amount of vertical real estate, they are catching on here rather better than in some of the nation's flatter cities. Slidewires too are a new thought, at least as a commuter transport. Sure, rubes for a hundred years have strung so-called "zip lines" between trees and played at flying. We however, have perfected the technology to a fine art, noted and admired far and wide - to the extent we understand a certain cross-ocean town-of-light is planning to string lines from their Eiffel Tower.

New York Aerial Atlas: A Travelers' Guide Above The Streets [Paperback]
Fractal House Publishers (Author), Jerry Mercator (Editor)
4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (658 customer reviews)

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
This is the second edition of an atlas first published in 2051. In the subsequent six years the aboveground transport networks of New York City have grown considerably. The EVAN pneumatic trains of course have made the news repeatedly, what with the increased reports of altitude sickness causing a switch from vacuum power to pressure propulsion. But even the wildly individualistic world of the slidewires has been updated. And the recommendations on where one might dock one's '57 Chevy may be as good as one could expect of a printed publication. Daily commuters of course will consult the many online sources of parking information before they leave their own mooring at dawn. Strongly recommended by a cross-section of the City's commuters, officials, and tourists.

- five index maps by borough
- 422 detail maps of neighborhood routes (Manhattan), 482 (The Bronx), 1138 (Queens), 922 (Brooklyn), and 604 (Staten Island)
- in five volumes, on Tyvek onionskin (Even the Queens volume is only 5/8" thick) all 10.5x8 inches.
- a chart of standard rates and typical extortion, with online updates paid for four years
- overlays indicating the zones most and least susceptible to hijacking and wire fraud
- a free 14-oz tube of Minson's Slide Lube, the best in the sky
- fourteen pages of calisthenics, yoga, tai chi, and weight training to prepare for a daily slide commute
- reviews of the city's nineteen aerocab franchises
- handy reference charts of weather and traffic flags, both the Staten Standard Set, and the New Harlem Signal System
- application forms for over two dozen varieties of aerial commute insurance, with more available online

I picked midtown Manhattan to do a map of some... alternate... transportation methods due to the varied 'topography' there. If one is setting up a bunch of urban zip lines for commuter use, a mix of tall and moderate and short buildings might work best. Since there's a variety of reasons why my decades-in-the-future 'slidewires' might be unused from some tall spots, an aerial transport culture might also have those flying cars we've been promised since the 1950's or before. And I've always liked the Beach pneumatic subways, why not figure an aerial version of those?

I'm figuring the most dense concentrations of skyscrapers would be fine for Spiderman and his swooping trajectory. Zip lines are straight, or a somewhat droopy 'straight'. So for these urban aeronauts to get maximum distance (and thrill, no denying that), there needs to be a pretty clear path from a high rooftop or wall to a lower one.

I'm reasoning a web of guy wires would be a dangerous environment for any coexisting flight methods... so my strictly regulated cab companies are going to have no-fly zones -- above some differing altitude here, there, and yon, and for sensitive areas (UN, Ground Zero?) maybe a total flight ban. With enough monitoring and regulation, maybe zeppelin-style aero buses are included in the mix. I'll have to see how much info I can convey on one map. Helicopters? Oh come now, who would want to use such obsolete transport?

Bing Maps' "birds-eye view" gives me a shot at figuring 3-D interference from one building to the next. I'm going for semi-plausible, not "real"... the fact I'm working decades in the future lets me blame any apparent errors upon changes in the city :-). I have done a little of that with the index map already -- some differences in the piers, a few differences in the street layout. My pneumatic-tube elevators might seem a bit tacky to some New Yorkers NOW... let's figure they become not just acceptable but in fashion. If occupants or architect or owner object to external additions like 2-foot diameter spaghetti pipes running up the outside walls, some internal elevator shafts might be converted to choob clusters. I say spaghetti, since so many NYC buildings are stepped - the ride up a choob curved to fit even loosely would no doubt be a wild trip. Hey, New Yorkers are tough and adaptable, in lots of ways. Commuters subject to vertigo would just have to stick to subways and cabs, the poor old-fashioned nebbishes.

I am still plugging away at this... In trying to figure out 3D lines-of-sight for the slidewires I did stitch together a bunch of birds-eye-view pieces. I'm hesitant to post even a how-to view of my scribbles on that, since it's Bing's map, not my work. But of course being CDO (abphabetized OCD... ) I had to figure the whole index map that my single zoomed-in map is located on. So here's that, as a pretty-near complete map. I'm doing the ME11 sheet (Midtown East sheet 11). Had to include the Chrysler Building :-). The neighborhood abbreviations probably need no explanation for a local, so I'll figure they're relegated to some index page in the Aerial Atlas.